So says the Washington Post in an article today discussing the amount of Atrazine found in water. Atrazine is the second most widely used weedkiller in the US and is widely used by corn farmers. Atrazine has also been banned in the European Union because of negative impacts on wildlife when high concentrations reach the watersheds.
Atrazine, the second most widely used weedkiller in the country, is showing up in some streams and rivers at levels high enough to potentially harm amphibians, fish and aquatic ecosystems, according to the findings of an extensive Environmental Protection Agency database that has not been made public.
The analysis — conducted by the chemical's manufacturer, Syngenta Crop Protection — suggests that atrazine has entered streams and rivers in the Midwest at a rate that could harm those ecosystems, several scientific experts said. In two Missouri watersheds, the level of atrazine spiked to reach a "level of concern" in both 2004 and 2005, according to the EPA, and an Indiana watershed exceeded the threshold in 2005.
Much of the data on atrazine levels has remained private because Syngenta's survey of 40 U.S. watersheds was done in connection with the EPA's 2006 decision to renew its approval of the pesticide. The Washington Post obtained the documents from the Natural Resources News Service, a District-based nonprofit group focused on environmental issues……
……The federal government first approved atrazine in the 1950s, but it came under increased scrutiny in the late 1990s after Tyrone B. Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley, did a series of studies — first for chemical companies and then on his own — that indicated that tiny amounts of the pesticide de-masculinized tadpoles of African clawed frogs. The European Union declared it a harmful "endocrine disrupter" and banned it as of 2005, but the EPA decided to allow its continued use after determining that the agency lacked a standard test for measuring the hormone-disrupting effects of chemicals…..
…..Nancy Golden, a biologist and toxicologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who studies how chemicals affect aquatic creatures, said fish exposed to as little as 0.5 parts per billion of atrazine in the lab demonstrate behavioral problems. At higher levels, they experience stunted growth. The levels of atrazine in 2004 in the two Missouri sites were more than 100 times the 0.5 parts per billion concentration, the Syngenta data show. (Emphasis added)
An awful lot of this stuff is reaching the water and an awful lot of people get their drinking water from those water sources. Cheerful thought, isn't it? Another ecological problem that increases the negative impact of ethanol.
Wait until the nitrogen count skyrockets. Throughout the midwest farmers are planting corn earlier and later and flat skipping any kind of nitrogen fixing fallow. Which means more nitrogen fertilizer and more weedkillers.
Just keeps getting better and better. Putting on my tinfoil hat it’s almost like the enviro-whackos _knew_ this would happen and intend on famine and economic collapse. Great way for Gaia to shake off a few billion fleas.
Yes nitrogen pollution and nitrogen fixing issues , as a mere peasant farming my own land ( 30X50 garden ), I seem to recall something about crop rotation.
It seems that “corn smut” has cycles that get stronger each year. Fighting it requires hybrid corn and lots of fungicides ( worse then pesticides in some cases ). I think you need to “rest” the land every few years and grow alfalfa or something.
I was a farmer-out-standing-in-my-field.
Also, burning ethanol produces more NOX emissions – NOX formation is a function of temperature of ignition. Alcohol burns hot – hence the pretty blue flame.
Atrazine has been around for 50 yrs. One would think if there was a health problem with it, it would have been detected long before now. In addition, the acreage that has atrazine applied is way down from what it once was. Genetically modified Roundup ready corn is planted on millions of acres and there is no need to apply atrazine to these acres. The country is not going to be planted wall-to-wall with corn. Crop rotation is important and corn yields receive a significant boost if the field was planted to soybeans in the previous year.
Once again… we are at the mercy of the law of unitended consequences…
Feeblemind, that’s _not_ what’s happening. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And one place corn farmers are turning to for cheap nitrogen is chicken litter. One ton of chicken litter supplies about 60 pounds of nitrogen most of which is available to the plants in the first year. It’s also loaded with phosphorus.
Remember why phosphorus was taken out of detergent?
The Mississippi is going to turn into a green river of algae. Of course, that _would_ take a lot of CO2 out of the air. See? Always a silver lining.
QM, atrazine is a weed killer. It has nothing to do with nitrogen or phos which are fertilizers.